Hi annie. It’s my bad that i didn’t clarify that my comment was meant as an invitation to Mondoweiss’s resident philosopher (commenter RoHa) to tell me what he thinks of my suggested strategy of philosophical theorizing about political correctness and Antisemitism allegations, given my commitment to political correctness. I was not making any political/tactical suggestion as to how to confront Israeli injustices and the pro-Israel advocates’ strategies. When i wrote the following

” I should also add that, as a fervent supporter of political correctness, i would want such a theory of the transitivity of “smacks of” to be possible.

RoHa must have understood that i was inviting him for joint philosophical reflection, not politics — referring to the need for a theory of X while talking to an analytic philosopher is a surefire way for her to understand that you are making a demand for something intellectually rigorous. But knowing this fact about “demands” for a theory of X is esoteric knowledge, confined to philosophers and their fans. When i wrote the following

“And then i would try to find out what it is that allows me to criticize Israel or pro-Israel activists in ways that are not intuitively Antisemtic

once again i am sure RoHa understood that i was engaging in a philosophical game of trying to solve a logical puzzle,. I wasn’t suggesting that we should wait until we have an unassailable theory of Antisemitic allegations before we express our views.

Your tweet about “suggesting” is spot on, conveys exactly the same idea that philosopher Oliver Traldi and RoHa expressed.

I should also add that, as a fervent supporter of political correctness, i would want such a theory of the transitivity of “smacks of” to be possible. And then i would try to find out what it is that allows me to criticize Israel or pro-Israel activists in ways that are not intuitively Antisemtic even if my hypothesized criticism would be protested by pro-Israel activists and even though, ex hypothesi, my criticism would be banned under our ex hypothesi successful theory of “smacks of”. I think that these sought for considerations that convey permissibility to the anti-Israel criticism would have something to do with which of the competing groups is the more powerful in the instances that we place our verdict upon. But i have read nothing on anything on these issues.

RoHa, the strategy of pro-Israel activists that you are talking about would need to be theorized under the name “the transitivity of the ‘smacks of’ relation”. I just saw a link from philosopher Jason Stanley’s twitter feed to a criticism of Michelle Goldberg’s first article about Rep Omar by an analytic philosopher (who apparently disagrees that such a theory can ever work):

“Perhaps Goldberg is merely acting from an awareness of the weakness of her own case, however. For her article inadvertently downplays the anti-Semitism of the statements Goldberg calls anti-Semitic. Instead, she says: “It’s particularly incumbent on Israel’s legitimate critics to avoid anything that smacks of anti-Jewish bigotry. And the idea of Jews as global puppet masters, using their financial savvy to make the gentiles do their bidding, clearly does.”But there is something wrong with this formulation. Omar has never claimed that Jews are global puppet masters using their financial savvy to make the gentiles do their bidding. Goldberg is right that claiming this would “smack of” anti-Semitism. All Omar has said are things that, to some, “smack of” that sort of claim.What Goldberg requires for her account to make sense is what a logician might call the transitivity of the “smacks of” relation: that if A “smacks of” B and B “smacks of” C, then A “smacks of” C. Of course, “smacking of” is not the sort of concept that will be susceptible to such precise analysis. It’s a fuzzy, almost silly phrase, which undermines the seriousness of the accusation — if indeed it was intended to be serious.In a way, though, the silliness of “smacks of” is on a par with the rest of the piece. The accusation of anti-Semitism, a serious ethical and characterological charge, is subsumed in a kind of kugel of tactical considerations and apologies for Jewish prickliness. Most of the essay has nothing to do with Ilhan Omar at all.

Mooser yes, those who, motivated by loyalty to Israel, break US law to advance Israel’s interests, would clearly fall under the concept of dual loyalty. But they can still be blamed for breaking the law for no morally legitimate reason, and blamed also for gravely harming the Palestinians (if the transgression is relevant to Palestine). They don’t have to be blamed for dual loyalty, even if it’s true.

I had posted a comment after your first comment, but both showed up together, so i don’t know if my subsequent comment adds anything to what you had in mind.

” as far as I am concerned my pro-Israel friends in my country, Greece, or in the US or wherever can knock themselves out if they feel like it and be 100% loyal to Israel and 0% loyal to their countries.”

It must be obvious that i was referring to loyalty to Israel as not being problematic on the grounds of dual loyalty. I was saying, in other words, that i don’t blame people for being more loyal to other countries than their own. I wasn’t saying that there are no other grounds on which it is morally problematic to be loyal to Israel, because such grounds do exist — the occupation of Palestine, for example. I was only saying that i wouldn’t call “traitor” someone who supports Israel more than his country. I wasn’t saying that supporting Israel is not blameworthy on other grounds.

Here are a few thoughts of mine representative of my own working conceptual scheme regarding dual loyalty. I think it is the same conceptual scheme shared by many people – I don’t endorse it, of course, in the normative sense: I don’t believe in loyalty to countries, I don’t think that patriotism is a value, I don’t think that borders have any inherent significance, I don’t like national identities, I think we would better off without them. But I am trying pretheoretic baby steps in the direction of theorizing about the allegation of dual loyalty as it is used by “patriots”.

It is logically possible for one to have “allegiance” both to her native country and to another country, and still not fall under the label of “having dual loyalties”. I take it as a necessary condition for dual loyalties that the person in question harbors more loyalty towards the other country than her own native country. If, on a scale of loyalty to country from 0 to 100, with 0 signifying indifference and 100 signifying the maximum amount of patriotism possible, if she has in her heart 90 units of loyalty for her country of birth (US), then she is required to harbor in her heart no more units of loyalty than 90 for Israel. Everything from 90 downwards is loyalty to Israel that is perfectly acceptable. Even equal loyalty to both the US and Israel are ok: dual loyalty requires that the person in question be more loyal to Israel than to the US for her to be properly considered a member of the set of people with dual loyalties. Therefore, being equally loyal to each country is fine.

But what about cases where the interests of the US are incompatible with the interests of Israel? Let’s take the easy case, where we are talking about interests of the same importance, say the person in question has to make a decision that will inevitably result either in the loss of 5% of US per capita wellbeing, or 5% of Israel’s per capita wellbeing. I take it as a necessary condition for someone to be dual loyal that she would choose to sacrifice the US wellbeing for the sake of Israel’s wellbeing. If, on the other hand, she always prioritizes the US interests over Israeli interests of equal importance, she is not dual loyal.

What about someone who has erratic behavior, i.e someone who sometimes prioritizes the interests of the one country, sometimes those of the other? This person then is, according to our theory, sometimes engaging in patriotic acts and sometimes in acts that evince dual loyalty.

But what about cases of incompatible interests where there is significant difference in the size of the US and Israeli interests that are at stake? What if the person in question can act so as to save Israel from a massive reduction in wellbeing (say, 95%reduction), but her action necessarily involves a 1%reduction in US wellbeing? I think in these cases she wouldn’t fall under dual loyalty if she prioritized the Israeli interest. But I have no principled way to decide how large the difference between the incompatible Israeli and US interests should be in order to diffuse the charge of dual loyalty in case the person acts for Israel’s sake. What if the choice is between reduction in US wellbeing by 20% and the reduction in Israeli wellbeing is 60%? I have no answer, but then I don’t need to have one because I don’t believe in patriotism 😊 , as far as I am concerned my pro-Israel friends in my country, Greece, or in the US or wherever can knock themselves out if they feel like it and be 100% loyal to Israel and 0% loyal to their countries. Welcome to my post-nationalist utopia 😊:

“I am not dual loyal. I always put America first, but I want to see Israel thrive — just like many Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Indian-Americans and others feel about their ancestral homelands.”

To connect all this to the discussion about Rep Omar: Mr Bret Stephens is accusing her of Antisemitism, and he does so apparently on the grounds that her speech act was invoking dual loyalties. But as we saw, “allegiance” to Israel, even in the form of extreme loyalty of the 99 units-of-loyalty variety, does not count as dual loyalty so long as the person in question is equally loyal (or more) to the US. And Rep Omar only spoke of allegiance, not of dual loyalties, and she didn’t even cast the issue as an issue about the allegiance of US Jews but as allegiance required of her. True, my theory is not even remotely as rigorous as analytic philosophy demands, but it’s a tiny layman’s step in this direction. And compared to what Mr Bret Stephens writes about the Israel/Palestine conflict in the New York Times, it’s rocket science 😊